The Real-Life Baghdad Bomb Squad, Revisited

Criticisms aside, the movie did put the spotlight on the extraordinary work done in Iraq and Afghanistan by explosive ordnance disposal teams — and the terrible lethality and sophistication of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. It would be hard to overstate how quickly the threat evolved: Back in 2005, Maj. Bruce Paterson, director of the IED working group at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, reminded people working on technological solutions that there was no quick fix, no silver bullet, when it came to detecting and countering these deadly devices.

“I get a whole lot of folks who tell me … oh, we’ve got the answer, we can pick up that 155-mm shell under the ground,” he said. “Great. Can you tell me what 6 155-mm shells, one 500-pound bomb, a tire filled with explosives and two propane tanks all piled together under the road looks like? And is your system smart enough to figure that out? I highly doubt that. No IED is the same. Everyone is different: use your imagination. The enemy does.”

Of course, getting “left of boom” by tracking bomb-building networks was one of the main advances in the counter-IED fight. For an account of that, it’s worth going back and re-reading Rick Atkinson’s indispensable series on the Joint IED Defeat Organization in the Washington Post. And for a more intimate look at the work of a bomb-fighting team, I’d also recommend Noah’s 2005 story on Team Mayhem and the soldiers of the Army’s 717th Explosive Ordnance Disposal Company. It’s another must-read.

Also online, Foreign Policy has a decent photo essay on the real-life “Hurt Locker.” And for good measure, read Buda’s Wagon, Mike Davis’ history of the car bomb. It’s not focused on the current wars, per se, but it’s a timely account of one of the more spectacular weapons in the terrorist’s arsenal.